When a cellular telephone network is planned, it is known in the art to employ a three cell reuse pattern. Such a pattern comprises a plurality of sites, each of the plurality of sites being divided into three cells and allocated a predetermined number of frequencies for the purpose of frequency hopping. A first cell is allocated a first set of frequencies, a second cell is allocated a second set of frequencies and a third cell is allocated a third set of frequencies. The frequencies and the allocation thereof is identical for each site.
However, such a plan does not account for sources of interference, for example, geographic obstacles and topography of the terrain covered by the network. This often leads to some cells having lower capacity than the majority of cells. The lower capacity cells set a limit on the network capacity as a whole.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to obviate or mitigate the problems associates with frequency planning in a cellular network.